Jim Cramer has a decent piece on the end of Quantitative Easing (QE). He calls on Wall Street pundits to apologize for their incorrect predictions.

Cramer breaks it down quite well into several specific predictions that went wrong. The basic idea under fire — The Federal Reserve was propping up the economy with QE, and the moment QE ended the economy would crash like a house of cards.

Big news is that that Federal Reserve announced the end of Quantitative Easing (QE). Interest rates are supposed to spike up now, right?

They certainly haven’t yet. Of course this is only the first day after the announcement. Short term movements can send markets in any direction, and who knows if rates may actually rise over the next year.

But my point is that there is never a situation where you get “direct” and “predictable” market movements, like many ...

Apparently CalPERS (the California State retirement pension fund) is no longer going to invest in hedge funds, according to this post from Gawker.

I hope this is true. The Gawker article does a nice job of identifying that this is a good move on the part of CalPERS. This is not a “neutral” event or a “wait and see what happens” occurrence. This is, without a doubt, a rational, smart ...

Many investors are frustrated with low interest rates, but the actual (real) return is not as bad as they think.

We’ve all heard the complaints. Interest rates are at historic lows, which frustrates many investors that want income, especially from low risk investments such as CD’s, money market funds or high grade bonds.

Interest rates on low risk investments have been near zero for several years now. Many investors are remembering the old days when government bonds and bank ...

“Beating the market” shouldn’t be anyone’s investment goal, and this especially applies to families that have inherited investment portfolios.

Oddly enough, most of the investment industry and investing public is fixated on the idea of “beating the market.” For too many investors, that ends up being the point of it all. Why? I’m not entirely sure, but I think it has a lot to do with trying to make the client feel like they are “winning” the game. If ...

I’m sure a lot of families are wondering what to do now that the Dow Jones Industrial Average has reached 17,000. Is this a good sign or does it mean danger?

I’ll refer you back to a post I wrote almost exactly one year ago on the subject of the market reaching an all-time high. In short, this doesn’t mean anything. An all-time high is not necessarily an indication ...

A few days ago I ran across the best definition of investment banking that I have encountered to date.

When I was fresh in the industry it was somewhat of a clouded subject for me. People would talk about “investment banking,” but what, exactly, was that? I was working for a brokerage firm at the time. Was I in investment banking, I wondered? And if not, what did investment banks do that my firm didn’t do?